`EXTREMELY LUCKY' PILOT AIDED BY A STRANGER IN THE CLOUDS

Knight-Ridder/TribuneCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Joel Colegrove, businessman and pilot, was putting his plane away for the night at the deserted Lawrence (Mass.) Airport, after a tiring midnight flight from Albany, N.Y., when the tone of a conversation coming over the plane's radio stopped him.

Another pilot was up in the early Saturday sky, in a single-engine aircraft somewhere in the darkness. "There was something in the back of my mind that told me to listen," Colegrove, 33, said.

The plane's pilot, Larry Miller, was getting into serious trouble. Dense fog had prevented him from landing in Beverly, Mass., as planned.

He had turned to Lawrence, but was unable to illuminate the runway's lights with his radio, which was failing. He was losing touch with air traffic control. He was running out of fuel.

Colegrove, listening on his radio and watching the weather thicken, did what seemed to him the obvious thing to do. "I hopped in my plane and went up," he said.

For several predawn hours Saturday, until Miller's Cessna 172 crashed near a New Hampshire airfield, leaving him injured but alive, the two planes flew together across state lines looking for a place to set down. Colegrove became Miller's radio contact with the ground and his spotter in the air.

With fuel exhausted, Miller crashed at 3:30 a.m. Saturday, several miles from the runway at Pease International Tradeport, a former Air Force base, in Newington, N.H. He and the wreckage were not discovered until 8 a.m.

Miller, who officials said was from Aurora, Ill., was listed in fair condition Saturday at Portsmouth (N.H.) Regional Hospital, where he was being treated for a broken hip. Hospital officials said he arrived conscious and alert.

Miller's Cessna was found on a private driveway when the fog lifted. Trees had clipped off both wings. The fuselage was twisted and crumpled, but Miller had been able to crawl free and was waiting on the ground when rescuers arrived.

"The plane was completely destroyed. He was extremely, extremely lucky," said Ronald O'Keefe, Durham's assistant fire chief, who was among those who found the wreckage.

Colegrove, who assisted from the air in the search for the wreckage, landed his single-engine Mooney safely at the Pease airfield.

At home Saturday in Melrose, Mass., Colegrove explained: "He's a pilot, I'm a pilot. If the roles were reversed, someone would do the same for me."